A Guiding Hand: How Industrial DevOps Supports the Software-Defined Automation Transition

Industrial DevOps and Software-Defined Automation (SDA) are symbiotic elements working toward changing the nature of automation workflows and architectures, moving the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) engineering and Operational Technology (OT) world into one that looks more like an Information Technology (IT) domain. As SDA encourages automation engineers to regularly change and adapt code to create flexible automation architecture, the requirement for a solution to effectively track and manage code changes and controller assets becomes paramount.

However, industrial DevOps solutions aren’t only for those leading manufacturers already racing forward with SDA, as the platforms provide highly compelling value propositions for existing automation infrastructure, especially those with highly heterogenous PLC environments.

Industrial DevOps can meet manufacturers where they are, enabling automation engineers to gain a granular view of their automation processes and coding, and then support the preparation for a smooth transition toward SDA-based manufacturing.

While SDA brings a revolutionary change to the automation world, it is not without its challenges. These include the increased connectivity of automation assets creating a greater threat to manufacturers’ cybersecurity landscapes, handling the growing size of code bases and SDA increasing the adaptability of automation processes, and the shrinking size of the automation engineering workforce. However, industrial DevOps platforms bring a significant number of benefits to the table for manufacturers, allowing them to address these challenges associated with SDA architectures.

• Comprehensive View Can Keep Malcontents Out: As automation assets become more digitally connected, combined with the increased thread of ransomware in industrial operations, industrial DevOps and controller management platforms will become essential for maintaining manufacturers’ OT cybersecurity. The platforms allow for rapid rollback of code changes that introduce vulnerabilities, easy suspension of suspected malicious actors, and a comprehensive view of automation activities across the organization, allowing easy identification of discrepancies in operations. Holistically, these software tools allow manufacturers to shift the security focus toward the development of the automation code.
• Remote Management of PLC Code: Automation engineers can remotely manage and code connected PLC assets, allowing manufacturers to rely on a reduced number of workers, which is highly valuable in the face of shrinking skilled labor markets. Furthermore, it provides users with a clear understanding of who is accessing and changing code, adding an additional layer of security and transparency.
• Simplifying Complex Code Bases and the Coding Process: Due to the increasing presence of SDA, alongside the heterogeneous automation environments manufacturers currently operate in, the complexity of automation infrastructure is only going to increase, with larger code bases and more control assets, driving an increasing risk of version inconsistencies. The collection of all controller code in a single source of truth platform where engineers can track changes made and automatically highlight where coding errors have been introduced will be invaluable. Alongside this, industrial DevOps platforms help to significantly reduce low-value coding tasks, as the centralized development environments allow for the storage of code assets, eliminating code replication for new lines and plants, alongside tedious verification and validation testing.

The SDA market is still developing, with new vendors and solutions making their way into the market, and the same can be said for the industrial DevOps space. While these offerings are not necessarily new, and support the existing automation market’s coding landscape, the growth of SDA technology has notably expanded the impact that these platforms have on automation infrastructure. Copia, QT, and Software Defined Automation represent three vendors that are active in supporting the SDA market.

• Copia: Copia provides manufacturers with an industrial DevOps platform that includes industrial code source control, along with automatic backups and disaster recovery. Copia’s Git-Based Source Control product allows operators to gather PLC code from multiple sources and render it in a way that enables Git-based collaboration. The platform also supports a range of automation vendors’ code validation, enabling manufacturers to review their PLC code from multiple vendors in a single, cohesive environment. This is highly valuable for both the new emerging automation workforce that is inherently more rooted in IT practices and for the traditional OT professionals that are used to ladder logic-based automation coding practices because of the visualization and omni-vendor approach. The tool’s modern approach to automation helps attract new talent, which is becoming increasingly essential for manufacturers. Furthermore, Copia’s DeviceLink product provides automatic backup and disaster recovery. As the scope and complexity of automation infrastructure and solutions continue to increase, especially with the arrival of SDA, manufacturers can derive significant value from a platform that allows automation engineers to easily collaborate and control PLC code, monitor both hardware and software control assets working in the plant, run automatic backups, track notifications of code changes, and rapidly recover in the event of disaster.
• Qt: Qt Group's Qt Quality Assurance offering includes the Axivion tool that supports automation engineers with powerful static code analysis, allowing effective validation and verification of code, with the solution running continuously in the background, automatically flagging programming flaws. The product gives manufacturers a clear visual representation of their automation architecture, with traced lines representing different interactions and integrations within the source code, and most importantly, highlighting any programming flaws or issues with unmistakable red lines. Even if the code is still working and running, this allows automation engineers to make an informed choice around the management of code. Manufacturers can view their entire automation software code and architecture through a centralized, web-based dashboard, providing a single source of truth for automation engineers to ensure maintenance of code quality.
• Software Defined Automation: Software Defined Automation’s solution allows manufacturers to track and manage code changes across multi-vendor automation solutions, significantly increasing manufacturers’ traceability in their automation code processes, ensuring that automation engineers are working from a single source of truth, and enabling highly effective worker collaboration. It standardizes how engineers interact with the automation languages for many automation vendors, a massive benefit for not only manufacturers with heterogeneous automation architecture, but also those with simpler infrastructure, as even different versions of the same system from an automation vendor can be incompatible. The ability to manage a number of automation solutions in a single, centralized, and vendor-neutral platform cannot be understated. The platform easily allows automation engineers to come to grips with legacy and present automation projects through the translation of existing PLC code into human language to easily understand what the system is doing. This significantly reduces the time needed for operators to engage with and complete automation projects.

These solutions augment many automation vendors’ existing portfolios and can act as effective bridges to help manufacturers move from traditional automation infrastructure to SDA ones; therefore, partnerships with leading industrial DevOps providers are highly valuable. Automation hardware vendors, in particular, should look to closely partner with industrial DevOps to ensure that their hardware control assets remain competitive and connected as the market transitions over to a mixed ecosystem of SDA and hardware with more flexible and changeable automation infrastructure. There will be a threat to competitiveness and market share of any hardware vendor that relies on historic and incumbent relationships with manufacturers and buries their heads in the sand in the face of SDA. This technology and industrial DevOps, while currently limited to more advanced automation environments, will grow to be used en masse in the manufacturing market.